ع
A recent BBC article titled ‘Everyone’s afraid to die’: Struggle to recruit soldiers in Ukraine turns violent detailed how serving soldier Vasyl Krupych was badly beaten with a crowbar last December while patrolling for draft dodgers, leaving him hospitalised for six weeks with a broken rib. Krupych, who had volunteered at the outset of the war and survived intense fighting in the Donbas region where he witnessed comrades burned to death, questioned the purpose of his service when attacked by fellow citizens. The military ombudswoman described such incidents as now regular and a major problem, while the National Police Service report placed the total assaults on recruitment officers above 600 to date with the aggression growing increasingly threatening.
The first major warning emerged in April when several recruiters were stabbed, one fatally, followed by a riot this month in Lviv where around 200 protesters surrounded officers detaining a suspected draft dodger and overturned their vehicle. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the violence against serving soldiers after the Lviv events, yet his subsequent decision to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has stalled further efforts to tackle the conscription crisis. Opposition MP Oleksandr Honcharenko attributed the backlash to coercive street patrols known as busification, which he said often employ violent methods that provoke further violence.
Military analyst Ivan Stupak traced the shortages to constant battlefield losses that required urgent refills, leading patrols to grab men off the streets and sparking street fights when individuals resisted. For every reported attack on draft officers, accounts have surfaced of abuse by recruiters themselves, including unlawful detentions and poor conditions at centres. Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner recorded more than 6,000 such complaints last year, a figure that doubled from the previous annual total.
University professor Kyrylo Ogdansky, exempt from the draft, recounted in the BBC report how plainclothes officers in Dnipro knocked his phone away, pushed him into a bus and beat him repeatedly about the head and nose, resulting in two weeks of hospital treatment and suspected neck injury. He noted receiving threats of immediate dispatch to the front line at Pokrovsk despite his exempt status, and filed official complaints while acknowledging that public discussion risks aiding Russian propaganda. Such cases have compounded reluctance to serve as nearly everyone knows someone killed or wounded after more than four years of full-scale invasion.
Krupych, who sports a tattoo reading Glory to the Ukrainian Armed Forces yet endures nightmares from his experiences, voiced deep frustration over the gulf between those who fought and those avoiding service. He suggested higher salaries might encourage volunteers but concluded that coercion remains necessary because replacements are essential. “It can’t be done differently, it can’t. Our lads need to be replaced. But nobody volunteers,” Krupych said. “Everyone is afraid to die.”
Before his dismissal, Fedorov had introduced reforms including fixed-term contracts with deferral options and elevated pay for the most dangerous roles to make service more appealing, though a full overhaul of conscription remained incomplete. Proposals under discussion involve shifting patrols to police units, alongside mandatory training and psychological screening for recruitment officers. With only an acting defence minister now in post, implementation of these measures has slowed even as the need grows more urgent.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Health reported that the number of soldiers and civilians who have lost limbs since the 2022 invasion doubled to 100,000 by the end of 2025, a toll that has amplified public fears. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, cited in the IOM Ukraine Crisis Response Plan 2026, recorded 2,514 killed and 12,142 injured during 2025, marking a 31 per cent rise from the prior year. To offset domestic shortages the armed forces have expanded outreach to foreign volunteers through the International Legion, which sets age limits of 18 to 60, requires medical and physical assessments, and offers no visa assistance.
